Using Experiments to Overcome Your Fear of Change

Agile prescribes continuous reflection and improvement -- in essence, change. And while everyone fancies change, implementing change can be scary and painful.

However, most people fear change because they lack the structure and process to approach it, assess it, and then implement it. The key to implementing change is approach it as an experiment where you form hypotheses, collect data, and assess results. While most people relegate experiments to high school science class, they are powerful business tools to help enact change.

The goal of this session is to introduce three powerful techniques for implementing experiments in any organization. This session will introduce these varied approaches and give the audience experience using them via time-boxed exercises. People will not have an excuse to fear change again!

Outline/structure of the Session

Much of our "fear of change" comes from 1. the challenge of truly understanding the problem, 2. working on something different than our typical day-to-day work, and 3. the uncertainty of change and its potential to be wrong (which is likely and why we must test things out!). This session asks participants to confront this and learn about three tools that help manage different concerns.

Overview of Session Structure:The session reviews three techniques and their background and closes with each participant practicing the technique they believe would help them the most. The aim is that practice helps participants develop their understanding of the material, learn from others in the session and ask better questions before we disperse for the next session.

Agenda with Notes and Suggested Timing:

Warm-up: How do we create change, or try new things in our organizations? What are some of the biggest challenges that we face? (7 min)

Introduction to the workshop: (10 min)Why do we experiment? Why this isn’t jumping to conclusions.How did I start using experiments at work?Why do I still use them, three years later?How will the rest of the session unfold?

The Toyota Kata Improvement Theme: (7 min)Overview: Why use it? What discipline does it come from?Practical Information: How does it work? What have I learned from using it? What example helps illustrate this?

Rationale for choosing this technique: The "Toyota-Kata Improvement Theme" is helpful in diverse situations. For small changes, this technique helps people articulate and manage the change. Sometimes, the fear of confronting a small change is that it's different than our normal process. With this template, it is easy and approachable to visualize and communicate the change and plan. Conversely, it's a great technique for times when you have such a big topic that you don't know where to start. This helps you start because it only asks you to identify the next "target condition", which may be 2, 4 or 6 weeks from now, and to try something! It is relieving to break things down, try a path forward and see progress incrementally.

Cynefin’s Experiment in the Complex Domain: (7 min)Overview: Why use it? What discipline does it come from?Practical Information: How does it work? What have I learned from using it? What example helps illustrate this?

Rationale for choosing this technique: Cynefin's "Experiment in a Complex Domain" is particularly useful when the change needed is risky, expensive or uncertain. It asks you to identify conditions that indicate success or failure. You must consider how to make it a safe-to-fail experiment so that you can "roll back" if needed.

A3 Experiment: Organizational Experimenting: (7 min)Overview: Why use it? What discipline does it come from?Practical Information: How does it work? What have I learned from using it? What example helps illustrate this?

Rationale for choosing this technique: The A3 is helpful when you know that something needs to change, but are so tangled up that you don't have a strong theory about the best way forward. It asks you to first identify the problem (not the solution!) and conduct root cause analysis before proposing possible counter-measures. It's a nice way to walk a team through a healthy thought-process for change and step back to consider what you're really solving.

Practice & Share (15 min)What is a challenge that you’ve been facing at work?What type of experiment is the best fit?Complete the experiment. 10 minutesShare with a partner for feedback. 5 minutes

Debrief as a Group (7 min)What did we learn from the exercise?How do you see yourself using this in your organization?

Close (5 min)

Q&A (10 min)

Learning Outcome

The Toyota Kata Improvement Theme format

Cynefin’s Experiment in the Complex Domain format

A3 Experiment format

Lessons learned from four years of using experiments in Agile environments

Practical application of an experiment to a current problem that challenges an attendee

schedule 2 years ago

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60 Mins

Talk

Beginner

All too often, companies set out with the mission to “go agile” before truly understanding what that means. Business managers are quick to jump on the agile bandwagon, believing that “going agile” will magically make projects happen faster. Teams are getting certified in Scrum as if it’s a silver bullet that will suddenly make everyone more productive. Inevitably, cracks begin to show, and expectations are missed--leaving everyone involved questioning the value of “going agile” altogether.

There is a better way! The truth is that going agile will result in more productive teams and faster delivery of projects--but only if everyone can agree on the rules of the game.

Come hear Heather Fleming and Justin Riservato from Gilt discuss why gaining consensus on the principles of Agile is more important than implementing a process, and learn how having these three conversations can save you from an agile disaster:

“But when will you be done?” Why getting rid of the concept of deadlines is the most important (and most difficult) conversation when going agile.

“This is my top priority, but I can’t meet with you until next week.” What to do when your business partner can’t (or won’t) be a full member of the team.

“I just want to code. Why do I have to be in all these meetings?” Why implementing Scrum is not the first step to going agile.

Jeffrey Davidson - Writing Better User Stories

schedule 2 years ago

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60 Mins

Talk

Beginner

"As a user of your system, I want functionality so that I can achieve my goals. Unfortunately, your team's users stories are getting in the way."

Users Stories, the tool teams use to break ideas into small chunks of deliverable work, are easy to describe and challenging to write. This session is about writing great user stories and acceptance criteria by ensuring everyone on the team knows what needs to be done. We will discuss what elements should be included and which ones are optional; why the size of your user story is important and how to make them smaller; and the structure for better acceptance criteria.

schedule 2 years ago

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90 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

Executives believe starting their project NOW means it will end sooner. Unfortunately, starting one more project costs dramatically more than waiting. Sharing limited resources causes all the projects to sub-optimize. Multitasking is costing your organization a fortune!

Are you tired of being time-sliced across too many projects? Learn how value decreases when you work on many projects at the same time and increases (!) when you focus and deliver on a single project.

Come, play a game based upon ideas from Critical Chain Project Management, Lean, and Agile. Take part and help us illustrate the power of focus on your project portfolio management.

Christine Novello - Translating Agile for a Non-Technical Team

schedule 2 years ago

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30 Mins

Talk

Advanced

Parlez-vous Agile?

Sprechen sie Scrum?

Agile methods originated in technical practice, and its roots are solidly planted in the fertile ground of software engineering. Certifications in Scrum all require understanding of engineering practices, and the more senior level certifications require both in-depth understanding and practical application. The message would seem to be that Agile practitioners must be Software Engineering practitioners. However, non-technical teams are adopting agile methods as ways to better organize – or, more accurately, self-organize – in increasing numbers.

As the language and history of agile is so strongly steeped in software engineering, applying agile methods in a non-technical setting requires some translation to be applied in a non-technical team. I'm not just talking about jargon translation here; the methods and practices themselves sometimes need a tweak to work outside software engineering. The use of agile and scrum is not a slam-dunk success in every setting - be it technical or non-technical - but in this talk, I will separate myth from reality and give some practical examples from my own experience. I invite you to join to learn, to contribute, and to discuss the opportunities as well as the effort required to leverage Agile/Scrum for a non-technical team.

Mariya Breyter - Agile coaching is dead. Long live Agile practicing!

schedule 2 years ago

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60 Mins

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For years, Scrum/Agile coaching has been an attractive career for many. It is frequently viewed as a continuation of a career for an experienced Scrum Master who understands the intricacies of the cultural change that makes Scrum teams successful, knows nuts and bolts of a Scrum engine, and has natural aptitude for knowledge sharing and growing others. A leader who is unselfish and acutely self-aware, who has experience, and ability to influence others. Many Scrum practitioners saw this role as their next step in professional development. The 2010 book, Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins’ and her Agile Coaching Institute made Agile Coaching a discipline rather than a buzzword. Now, five years later, Agile Coaching is rapidly losing its attractiveness as a professional career. In her open-space style talk based on a retrospective with the session participants, Mariya Breyter will explore why this is happening and what a natural career progression for an Agile coach is. Agile Coaches and Scrum practitioners will exchange their experience and discuss their paths for professional development.

Andrew Burrows - The facilitation of choice

schedule 2 years ago

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60 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

You often hear people ask, "Does the ScrumMaster role need to be a full-time role?". Obviously, the answer is yes. And you can point to results that you should expect to see from teams served by full-time, dedicated ScrumMasters. And you can detail the different aspects of the role that require such dedication. But the root of the issue is a misunderstanding of the ScrumMaster role.

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This session analyzes the ScrumMaster role through the lens of choice as an outcome. That is, that the role of the ScrumMaster is to facilitate the choice of an individual to be agile. The role of the ScrumMaster is to enable the behaviors that lead to agility, within the team and the organization.

schedule 2 years ago

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60 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

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Jason Tice - Scrum Metrics - Beyond the Basics

schedule 2 years ago

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60 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

If you’re practicing scrum, you’re probably well versed in velocity, escaped defects and other common scrum metrics. This presentation starts with a review of essential scrum metrics, how to properly use them, and how to interpret their trends. We’ll then quickly pivot into advanced and emerging metrics that many scrum teams (and programs) have found beneficial - examples include: how to measure and quantify the cost of delay when your team is blocked, how to ensure your team is investing the right amount of time to maintain clean code and create automated test scripts, and how to assess that your team is sharing work to support the whole-team approach. We’ll review a comprehensive taxonomy of scrum metrics and show examples of presented metrics in use. We’ll conclude talking about opportunities to better empower scrum teams to self manage by integrating economic and budgetary data with scrum metrics - consider this example: rather than reviewing estimates & actuals for all the stories completed in a sprint, determine your team run rate and track the cycle time for each story completed, then use these two data points to compute the cost for each story completed during a sprint, finally ask yourself if your customer or sponsor would be happy with the amount they invested to complete each story - if you’ve never tried this type of economic analysis with your team, trust me, you’ll have a much different (and probably more effective) discussion. By attending this session, participants will learn a comprehensive list of metrics and practices to gain greater insights to team / project health and reduce delivery risk - participants attending will receive a metrics worksheet that will list all metrics presented and include why and how to track each of them.

David Horowitz - Distributed Scrum -- Why It's So Difficult and What We Can Do About It

schedule 2 years ago

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30 Mins

Talk

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Sneha Kadam - Lean Machine

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60 Mins

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30 Mins

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schedule 2 years ago

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60 Mins

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As the world continues to become increasingly interconnected and interdependent, Black Swans --- large-scale unpredictable and irregular events of massive consequence --- are necessarily becoming more prominent!

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Si Alhir (Sinan Si Alhir) - Antifragility: Beyond Agility and Scrum

schedule 2 years ago

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60 Mins

Talk

Advanced

As the world continues to become increasingly interconnected and interdependent, Black Swans --- large-scale unpredictable and irregular events of massive consequence --- are necessarily becoming more prominent!

While agility involves responding to change, antifragility involves gaining from disorder; and while agility emphasizes embracing change through inspecting and adapting, antifragility emphasizes embracing chaos or randomness through adapting and evolving!

As a result of the proliferation of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, non-predictive decision making is quintessential --- and individuals, teams & groups, and organizations & enterprises are embracing the quest for greater antifragility to realize greater employee engagement and market innovation & disruption!

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If you’ve embraced any degree of agility or scrum, don’t miss this opportunity to go beyond agility and Scrum and explore antifragility in practice!

Christine Novello - When a Co-Located Team is Unexpectedly Distributed

schedule 2 years ago

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30 Mins

Talk

Intermediate

Most practitioners agree that co-location makes a more efficient agile team. Over the years, I’ve worked with teams that are co-located as well as teams with members in multiple locations. I've observed many ways to make the distribution somewhat less painful, and to reduce the impacts. There are many great tools out there to better enable collaboration across geography, and hundreds - maybe thousands - of viable communication tools as well.

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schedule 2 years ago

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60 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

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schedule 2 years ago

60 Mins

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Mariya Breyter - Scrum Future-spective (interactive presentation)

schedule 2 years ago

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60 Mins

Workshop

Advanced

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